Razer Mamba Wireless Review – Wireless Perfection

My main gaming platform is the PC. It’s a versatile platform and is endlessly customisable. When building or purchasing a PC, many people spend a lot of time researching the components that they consider most important.

Usually, these are performance related such as RAM and GPU. Endless hours spent pouring over comparisons and benchmarks to make sure they can eke out the most frames for their budget. It’s a shame though the way that many of those same people approach the way that they are going to interface with the PC they are so lovingly crafting.

It’s often a choice of whats cheap and pretty.  How many times have I been to a LAN to encounter someone with a freshly built, high spec PC with a $50 Officeworks wireless mouse and keyboard combo, or the latest mouse with 20 buttons that go forever unused but look shiny?

Too many times.

Razer Mamba Wireless Review

Perhaps the choice of “peripherals” is overwhelming, wired or wireless? RGB or something more subtle? Just how many buttons do I need on a mouse?

Which brand is good? can I really tell the difference between all these sensors?  Or maybe the term peripheral itself is the problem, it indicates that the items are somehow secondary, and less worthy of consideration when the opposite case is true.

The tools we use to interface with our gaming platform make or break the entire gaming experience, laggy input, unresponsive or overly sensitive buttons, cursor skipping. These things can be distracting, frustrating and ultimately lead to a terrible gaming experience, regardless of how many frames per second your GPU is pumping out.

With all this in mind, let’s consider the new Razer Mamba Wireless mouse. It’s been a long time since I have considered using a wireless mouse. Bad experiences in the semi-distant past caused me to return to the trusty cabled variety, for reasons of reliability and performance versus price point.

When I was asked to write a Razer Mamba Wireless review I was forced to wonder if maybe, just maybe the technology has finally come as far as it needs to for a wireless gaming mouse to be a viable replacement for wired one.

After a week of gaming and day to day use, I think I can safely say that it has.

Up to the Task

The Mamba Wireless provides quick, accurate tracking with selectable DPi ranging up to 16,000Dpi. Razer says that its new 5G Advanced Optical Sensor is the most precise on the market and combined with a fast 1Khz polling rate, it easily handled anything I threw at it without ever giving any sensations of jitter or jumping.

The feel of the mouse is solid, Nothing creaks or shifts under the pressure of a solid grip and the shape suits a hybrid claw/palm grip very well. The new style rubber grips on the sides are comfortable though a little slippery, with grooves, cut laterally into the rubber I sometimes felt like my grip was sliding back and forth along the mouse but not so much that it interfered with usability.

With seven programmable buttons, there are more than enough options for most gamers. The primary mouse switches, though not adjustable, are responsive and offer a satisfying click, as do the do the two side-mounted buttons.

The wheel has a comfortable action with not too much resistance, it’s quite sensitive to pressure to “scroll click” and may take some getting used to.  Two more buttons sit just above the wheel and are assigned by default to adjust the Dpi profile, however, I found that they were positioned a little too far back for really quick access in the heat of a fast-paced shooter.

I found it easier to map one of the side buttons to momentarily reduce the DPi while held, to help with sniping or other situation requiring very high accuracy.

Bright & Shiny

This is possible thanks to the Razer Synapse software, Razer’s all in one profile manager and Chroma colour coordinator and game store. To take full advantage of the Mamba Wireless’ features, you need to make an account and through Synapse, you can then reprogram any of the mouse buttons to suit, as well as having access to the lighting controls.

Razer is renowned for the lighting it includes in its peripherals and Synapse’s Chroma lab lets you customise just how shiny you would like your Razer peripherals to be.

There are options to suit any taste, from a single colour at low brightness to breathing randomised colours constantly changing. Synced with the Razer Goliathus Extended Chroma mouse pad featuring an El wire rim,  I had a subtle blue to purple pulse illuminating my desk. Very nice.

Considering all the lighting shenanigans and the high poll rate, the battery life is pretty good. Razer claims 50-hrs between charges and with a week of fairly solid use I only had to charge it once.

Charged and Ready to Go

Charging is easy thanks to a nice braided micro USB cable. It’s a little bit of a shame that we didn’t graduate to USB-C with this model but the connection is solid and using the mouse while charging on the cable only adds a minimal drag sensation.

The cable also doubles as an extender for the wireless receiver. The receiver dongle is tiny and an adapter is provided to allow you to use the provided charging cable to connect to the dongle and bring it a little closer to your mouse in the case that your tower is under a desk or a bit too far away.

All in all the Mamba Wireless is an excellent tool. It does what a great mouse does. When in use, you don’t know its there and allows for seamless, comfortable and accurate interaction with your PC. When not in use it provides customisable aesthetics with seamless integration with other razer chroma enabled products.

A Razer Mamba Wireless was provided for this review.